


Infestation

by SkullBoss



Category: Original Work
Genre: Aliens, Death, Horror, One Shot, Outer Space, POV First Person, Post-Apocalypse, Post-War, Science Fiction, Short One Shot, Space Marines, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-09
Updated: 2018-02-09
Packaged: 2019-03-16 00:47:54
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,872
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13625019
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SkullBoss/pseuds/SkullBoss
Summary: A pest control worker in the age of interstellar travel and colonization recounts an unpleasant experience with a strange, eerily clever breed of alien vermin.





	Infestation

Sometimes I wonder what it was like before we could traverse the galaxy. Every science fiction movie from the old days really got it wrong. Space Travel is slow, has terrible food, and everything seems to move differently, even with artificial gravity installed. No matter how hard you try, you really can’t recreate what things are like on an actual planet.

And the worst part of interstellar travel is the aliens. In all the movies, they could somehow talk to each other. They were just different enough to be cool or scary, but recognizable enough to be accepted by the general public. But when you really set out to a new world, you won’t have any clue what you’re looking at. After all, they’re just too… alien. 

The world I’m living on now, Gaia III, is really a prime example of the hell us colonists have to go through. Most of it is just the ruins of massive, polluted urban sprawls. And as if being an abomination to both my eyes and my sense of smell wasn’t enough, this planet is infested with vermin.

Most of the alien vermin we encounter are somewhat like insects or rodents. Annoying, but very easy to deal with. Gaia III has the Bonewalkers. And God damn it, they’re easily the worst I’ve ever dealt with. They start out pretty small and fragile, not a real problem. But if they are left to grow, they usually reach heights of about five to six feet tall standing. That isn’t particularly big for this world, but the idea of vermin being as large as civilized folk is unsettling to say the least. 

But their size isn’t even the worst part. Whereas most animals on this world have some sort of dermal covering, the Bonewalkers are pallid, bare-skinned freaks. A small patch of hair sprouts from their skull-like heads, lank and repugnant, often infested with small insects or coated in a foul smelling oil. Loose cloth hangs off their lanky, skeletal bodies like sails from a boat. And the noises they make… I despise their shrieking that keeps me up at night, the howls and the grunts. They think we can’t hear them as they sneak about the ruins, but we do. We just don’t care to wake up that late.

They were even worse before we settled here. Bonewalkers coated the entire surface of the planet in their sprawls, killing nature wherever they went. They were a mass extinction given life. But our marines were able to send them running with a few orbital bombardments that decimated their population and shattered their fragile social structures. But there’s still about a billion left across the world.

That’s where my division comes in. I’m not a marine, I’m just pest control. It’s not the most glamorous job in the space age, but it’s one of the most important. Alien vermin carries diseases that are highly expensive to treat. And they take up very valuable space that we could be using. Bonewalkers in particular seem to be actively resisting us. Sabotaging supply drops. Hit and run attacks. Poisoning reservoirs. They’re some of the more intelligent vermin I’ve dealt with, but they all go down just the same. Just last night I was doing a routine patrol on them. 

As I said, job’s pretty much the same always. I headed out in the usual required armored hazmat suit. Always have to stay safe from both the Bonewalkers and the intense pollution- some of it from them, some of it from our own orbital strikes. And strapped onto that suit is my arsenal: gas grenades, electrical baton, pulse rifle, and wrist-mounted flamethrower. You can’t spare any expenses or cut any corners when you’re dealing with entirely new planets and aliens. That’s why we keep my division small. Lets every one of us be armed to the teeth. 

Mission control had caught wind of a large pack of Bonewalkers taking up residence in the sewers below town- apparently they had built some sort of ramshackle subterranean colony. Now they weren’t civilized creatures by any means- after all, we don’t say that ants have a civilization because they make anthills. After heading down from our own orbital base (Surface isn’t quite ready for full colonization yet), I surveyed the area around me. Gray. Foggy. Bleak. And I was mercifully spared the stenches due to my protective suit. I was still disgusted, though. The Bonewalkers had destroyed this world. That wasn’t natural. Nothing about them was.

I cautiously made my way around the sprawl, following the path set by my holo-map to the nesting site. The grimy, bare remains of concrete buildings and skyscrapers made up the landscape while acid rain battered the time-worn asphalt and the sky was covered by a slow-moving thick smoke. The only signs of life I was getting so far were small insects hiding in the shadows and a few resilient weeds struggling out of the cracked earth. I couldn’t wait until we cleared this place out.

Eventually I found a large enough hole in the concrete to get into the sewers without opening a manhole- most of those entrances had been rigged with primitive traps. Thankfully, our orbital bombardments had done enough damage to create chasms we could just enter on foot. So I climbed down and softly landed in the water below.

Once again, I was relieved to be covered by my hazmat suit. Between rotting sewage, scurrying rats, and the distant sounds of Bonewalkers, I was very happy not to smell anything. I made sure not to let the disgusting atmosphere interfere with my goal as I activated my suit’s camouflage. There were several layers to this world’s sewer system and while I was only on the top, it payed to be prepared. After all, I would get to the next one through a grate. And if I was visible, the Bonewalkers would be able to scatter before I dealt with them. And considering how much of a thorn they’d been in my colony’s side, I wasn’t about to let that happen.

After what felt like hours of trudging through the grime and mud, I found a grate through which I could see the lower layer of the sewers. The howls of Bonewalkers could be heard from within. And I knew my job for the night was wrapping up. I reached around the grate, quietly loosening and detaching it so I could squeeze through. 

After I fell into the darkness, I had to squint a bit to get a grip on my surroundings. I turned my night vision on just to be safe. Nature had somewhat reclaimed this place. Fungus sprouted from cavernous walls, stone jutted from the fetid swamplike water, and rats had made their nests in the ruins of what the Bonewalkers had left behind.

But I could still see the wooden palisades marking the outskirts of Bonewalker territory. And they weren’t manned. I walked in, keeping my electrical baton ready in case of a surprise attack. As I stalked further and further into the nest, I could see more and more signs of Bonewalker activity. Crude markings on the wall, images and idols of their vile kind. Stashes of food and water held in large, hard-shelled containers. And of course, the sounds. Sometimes it’s easy to forget just how much those howls and screeches sound eerily like speech. I wondered if the creatures had a language, but buried the thought as quickly as it had appeared. If they were saying anything, they were merely preaching their hatred for my kind or reveling in the destruction they had once plunged this world into. I thanked whatever higher power was above us that these creatures had never spread into space.

Eventually, I saw them. Their unsettling, almost apelike frames filled the room ahead of me. Thankfully, I caught wind of them before they turned around and I was able to hide around a corner, pulling a gas grenade out of my belt and readying it. I took a few deep breaths. These things scared me. Not just because of how they looked. But they had killed this world before we had even found it. And they felt no remorse for it. They weren’t beasts, and they weren’t civilized either. They were demons. Living, breathing demons pulled straight from our nightmares. And it was up to me to cleanse them from this husk of a planet. I steeled myself in my resolve as I stepped into the opening.

The Bonewalkers shrieked in that vile tongue on the edge of speech. Some clutched their bloat-headed larva to their bony torsos while others raised primitive weapons at me. Others simply fled screeching into the darkness. I threw the grenade with all my might, sending even the furthest into a coughing mess. Holstering my baton, I aimed my wrist into the gas cloud. None of the beasts had even gotten near me before I gassed them. I was safe. So with the flick of a switch, a gout of flame erupted from my hand and ignited the gas into a ball of pure fire.

My work doesn’t make me happy. I heard the pained screeches of the adults. The shrill crying of the larva as they were all consumed by fire all the same. I knew not all of them had participated in the death of this world. But I couldn’t let them return to the surface. Gaia III was better in the hands of people like my own. People who travelled the stars and created order and harmony where there was none before. As the last of the Bonewalkers fell, I found myself almost shedding a tear for the lost life. But they weren't worth it. Their kind had its chance. And the stars had found them wanting. 

So yes, that’s what my job is. It doesn’t get much appreciation. Of course it doesn’t. I’m not a brave marine or a selfless medic. I’m not a fearless space captain or genius scientist. I don’t set the newest frontiers of space or harness the powers of dying suns. I just keep the pests out of our colonies. And it’s not glamorous. It’s not even cathartic half the time. If I want to let myself sleep at night, I don’t even call the pests by their proper names. That makes them almost sympathetic.

What, did anyone think Bonewalker was an actual scientific name? My kind has traversed countless stars, we have standards. We don’t name creatures like we would B-grade horror movie monsters. Not to mention how many planets already created scientific names for their animals. It doesn’t take a spacefaring civilization to do that. Even the Bonewalkers, pitiful as they were, had a classification system on their primitive world. Their old name was  _ Homo Sapiens Sapiens. _ Or as they called themselves… humans. 

It sure is good that we stopped classifying any species without space travel as civilized. Because then maybe we’d have to consider these Bonewalkers our equals. It doesn’t matter now. There used to be over seven billion. And now they’ve fled to the shadows. It’s only a matter of time before they’re gone. As if they never existed at all…


End file.
